


The Time Lord Who Waited (Badly)

by mogwai_do



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s05e13 The Big Bang, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 18:38:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mogwai_do/pseuds/mogwai_do
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So what happened to the Doctor between the crack in the wall of Amy's bedroom and her wedding day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Time Lord Who Waited (Badly)

Waiting is rubbish; he’s always suspected it and now he’s very definitely sure. Patience is not his forté, never has been. He’s not sure if it makes it better or worse that there is no time in the Void. He’s a Time Lord; he can feel the thread of his own timeline stretching out behind and before him, but in this place it’s like cog without any gears to mesh with, turning free, pointless.

He supposes even the TARDIS can’t last forever in the Void, he supposes a Time Lord can’t either, and he wonders if he might go mad first. He doesn’t think so though or at least no more mad than he already is and that all depends on your definitions of madness. He has faith and the friendship of Amy Pond and for now it’s enough. He can feel reality, if only tenuously, but there’s no place for him there yet, no way back, whether she knows it or not though Amy Pond is holding a space ready for him with her dolls and her pictures and her games.

He made the choice to step outside, into the Void, however much he didn’t want to, to let reality finish healing without the anomaly of the last of the Time Lords mucking up the works, but he does giving in even less well than he does waiting. Maybe it wasn’t much of a plan, maybe it was more hope than anything, but experience has taught him that sometimes that’s all you need and that nothing is ever truly impossible. If nothing else, he knows that he will keep on hoping that eventually he’ll be able to return if only because the Void is oh so very boring, even if sometimes, right at the very edge of his mind he thinks he feels the shadow of a ghost of a memory of something familiar.

He uses the time/no-time to check over the TARDIS, to repair the damage and unfortunately to completely fail to discover what might have caused the explosion originally. He reorganises his entire library, which takes rather longer than he expects, but he keeps finding books he’d forgotten entirely that he had. He even tries fixing the chameleon circuit again; it’s a challenge and it shouldn’t be, but he rather suspects it’s unfixable because the TARDIS wants it that way. He even sleeps for a while, but that’s almost as boring as the Void, except for the times he dreams and he’d rather be bored than have too many of those.

Then finally he feels it, a strange existential proximity, and he gets ready, pleased he spent some time sorting out the wardrobe room too, because it wouldn’t do to disappoint Amelia Pond on her wedding day. He’s not sure if it feels more like the Void is trying to spit him out, like a body expelling a splinter, or reality trying to drag him back in, but he can almost see the timelines ghosting in around his own, laying claim to him in a way that only another Time Lord could appreciate. And then, oh then, he hears them: the words. Simple words, old words, magic words, like the very best spell cast by the universe’s very own fairytale princess.

Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.

And the Void snaps around him, cracking open, and suddenly the gears are there to mesh, time flows around and through him; he belongs again and he hasn’t felt so alive, so vindicated, in centuries. He’s not surprised because this is Amy Pond and she is remarkable. He is maybe a bit astonished, possibly even slightly blind-sided, that she cares so much for him that not only had she held a place ready for him all this time, but that she would crack the universe open just to let him back in, because now, now he can admit to himself that his plan was such a long shot it should never, ever have worked.

He hears the hammering on the door and he can’t stop the grin spreading right across his face. He grabs his hat and his scarf and opens the door because though he can feel it, he needs to see it too. He looks at Amy, beautiful, passionate, _determined_ Amy and at Rory, patient and caring and no less determined in his own way, because though Amy held the key, it had taken both of them to open the crack wide. The girl and the boy who waited and he loves them for it, more than he thinks he’ll ever be able to tell them. He still doesn’t like waiting and he suspects he’s still no better at it, but maybe, sometimes, it’s worth it.

FIN


End file.
